Originally Posted by
SeaRenity
Thats curious . So its not just SE Aus. That is exactly what these lights do . It takes away the symmetry. Its hard to imagine satellites manoeuvring in this way. The changing light intensity between the lights is also a variable.
No, it's not just SE Aus, it's global. Anywhere you can see a satellite approaching/departing 53 deg lat you can see them appearing to behave in this way.
They are not manoeuvring. They are in an inclined orbit which takes them to 53 lat and then away again. It might look like they are manoeuvring but they are not. They are in an inclined orbit which takes them to 53 degrees latitude.
Different intensities can be explained by the solar reflection off their solar panels.
Originally Posted by
belowMDA
Yeah I’ve seen them. I couldn’t logically explain them. Not the starlink train. Changing track right to left and on different occasions left to right. Different intensities. Spotted westbound over the Tasman on Auckland Melbourne and Auckland Sydney tracks.
They are not changing track, they are in an inclined orbit which may make them look like they are changing track. Different intensities can be explained by the variation in solar reflection off their solar panels.
As I said earlier:
Originally Posted by
Xhorst
They are inclined orbits so they will appear to change direction as they reach their southern-most latitude which is 53S for most of them.
You can see them all here:
https://beta.starlink.sx - the bulk of them are in the 53 deg inclined orbit but a few are in different orbits. The so-called "polar" orbits are actually 97 deg inclined orbits which are slightly retrograde and are chosen due to the way they will cross the same points at the same time each solar day (also known as heliosynchronous orbits). This was done to attempt to provide service to polar regions with sat-sat laser links which needed ground uplink at some point in the orbit. There is always a chance you might see one of these sats at the same time which might persuade you that these sats are defying the laws of newtonian motion. They aren't.